Recent Articles

AP Photo/Toby Talbot People hold signs during a gathering on the anniversary of the Citizens United decision in Montpelier, Vermont We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights By Adam Winkler Liveright Corporations and American Democracy By Naomi R. Lamoreaux and William J. Novak, Eds. Harvard University Press This article appears in the Spring 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . W ith the passage of a massive corporate tax cut, a billionaire’s cabinet in Washington, and rising corporate profits amidst worsening economic inequality and insecurity, the problem of corporate power is justifiably at the forefront of political debate. A pair of new books provide a rich historical context for understanding these tensions between corporate power, democracy, and inequality: legal scholar Adam Winkler’s We the Corporations , and a volume edited by historians Naomi Lamoreaux and William Novak called Corporations and American Democracy . Taken...

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta Facebook ads linked to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election are displayed at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on November 1. Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy By Jonathan Taplin Little, Brown World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech By Franklin Foer Penguin The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality By Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles Oxford University Press This article appears in the Winter 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . L ong the darlings of the digital revolution, Google, Facebook, and Amazon now face growing concern about the power they have acquired over politics, culture, and the economy. With Google and Facebook, the immediate issue in the past year has been their role in spreading fake news. With Amazon, it’s been the online retailing giant’s seemingly...